


I Need a Love Just Like You Give

by ReminiscentLullaby



Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Late Night Conversations, Post-Season/Series 03
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-07
Updated: 2020-09-07
Packaged: 2021-03-07 05:35:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26347963
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ReminiscentLullaby/pseuds/ReminiscentLullaby
Summary: Gabriel thought using both miraculous himself would be an adequate solution while Nathalie recovered. He was wrong, and the issue brings up a whole mess of feelings he might not be ready to deal with.
Relationships: Gabriel Agreste | Papillon | Hawk Moth/Nathalie Sancoeur
Comments: 11
Kudos: 53
Collections: GabeNath Book Club and Art Club Server





	I Need a Love Just Like You Give

**Author's Note:**

> So, essentially, I am not very good at writing fluff, considering this is what my honest attempt looks like. At some point I will manage to create something cute. Hold me to it. As for now, here is this one-shot. In the genre of "two people talking for a while and they kinda feel emotions but don't address them." Enjoy. 
> 
> Lightly inspired by "Paint" by The Paper Kites.

He's a lone shadow under such delicate light, the kind which makes objects blackened in the dark visible only by the faint reflections of pale silver against their facing edges; a half moon and a scatter of illuminated windows beyond the glass out which he stares do very little to reveal those subtle flushes of color in his form. His suit is black. Almost. In the light of day, one might be able to tell that it is truly a deep, dark shade of violet, like clouds suspended above a twilight horizon unable to catch those last breaths of sun. He has long coattails hanging towards his ankles, and they are lined with indigo, the same indigo that gloves his balled fists and masks his face. Though, not even he can tell much difference from the black he sees in such a dimly lit space.

The tap of his shoe against the floor has been slow and soft as dripping water, until he goes motionless for a moment, pressing his eyes shut to block the rose window's weak light. Even his chest pauses its steady rise and fall during those unhurried seconds. He is biting his tongue and he does not stop nor breathe again until it starts to hurt, after which he exhales with a gruffly spoken command to make the transformation melt off his body in a pair of colors. Blue and purple briefly reveal the man who truly stands in the center of the observatory, his dull skin and sunken eyes and mouth bent into a scowl. The weight of his cane vanishes quite literally into thin air and the fingers that had been tightly clenched fall open to feel for nothing.

He is used to empty hands.

One of them reaches for his sternum and plucks a brooch away. A kwami that had manifested at his side – the one who had learned at long last that her sputtering exclamations were not a welcome sound – dives back into the jewel, which he pockets at once.

The other brooch remains pinned in its usual place, and the kwami likewise.

He is at his Master's right shoulder, eyes flicking up and down. Silent.

Gabriel sighs.

Now that he has been standing motionless for nearly a minute, the soreness of his body becomes more apparent. The aching blooms between his shoulders and makes its way down his back, equally distributed across both sides of his spine, and into his legs which begin to feel too weak to hold him up for very long. He tilts his head to crack the joints in his neck. It is strained as if he had been stretching it towards the inky sky for hours, though Gabriel knows he has spent most of the last battle with his eyes fixed on the butterfly-speckled floor. 

Those white-winged creatures are practically invisible to him but for the few that flicker their wings under the dull stream of light. Gabriel, the tiredness sinking deeper into his bones, lets his gaze trace a loose path across the floor, across those butterflies, his only other companions but Nooroo hovering permanently at his side. Each he can make out through the dark, he counts, and as the number climbs, he begins to feel colder, colder, like he is drifting away from the sun, from any warmth of company at all.

He had twice the power tonight, but it seems a much lonelier loss.

He's become very…comfortable having someone to bear it with him.

Shadow Moth is a temporary solution, he said, eleven days ago, when he had first pinned on both brooches at once, one above the other. Nathalie had asked him why there were reports of an akuma and a sentimonster that day despite the fact she was bedridden at the time and hadn't the chance to touch the peacock miraculous despite it having been "good as new", in his words.

"I don't need you rushing to heal," he'd explained. "I'll be using both miraculous when I see fit until you have made a full recovery."

The look in her eyes stayed in his head for days, cool and stony and vacant of the little smile that she had stretched across her then-colorless lips as she whispered, "Yes, Sir." He still sees it when he transforms, somewhere flashing amidst the light swallowing his rigid, aching form.

He did not expect tonight to have been his third time becoming Shadow Moth. When the first attempt proved the difficulty of overseeing an akuma victim and a sentimonster at the same time, he believed it unlikely to take up the second miraculous any day soon. Yet, somehow he finds his mind full of plots involving the yield of both brooches, plots he shouldn't ignore as long as the opportunities present themselves.

It has to be because he has gotten so accustomed to Nathalie always playing a role, and if she must stand aside, then he cannot also shelve the shoes she used to fill.

He supposes it's fine, as long as she takes the time to get better.

He needs her to take her time.

He's worked solo before. Most days.

But right now…

There's a weight in his chest sitting deeper than the butterfly miraculous, and all the aches of his body can't quite compare to the way it slowly opens this gaping space to be filled with a fog-like disappointment, something which hangs low and clings to any surface it touches, something he cannot wrap his hands around and remove, something begging to be softly wafted away, lifted into clarity by a power greater than his own to walk passively through it.

At long last (he isn't sure what has kept him so long), he turns away from the window. The atelier is also quite dark when he emerges; he left the cove lighting on, but the sun had done the rest of the work – he hadn't realized how much time had passed since he had first unleashed the attack.

He hasn't eaten since that morning, and his stomach rumbles as he crosses from the lift to the closed atelier door. Despite this, he has no appetite and he is certain sleep is the only thing that can erase his fatigue. He might choose not to turn on the alarm he usually has set to 5:30 AM – 5:30 because he rarely finds himself able to sleep later anyway and he takes a small, simple amount of enjoyment of rolling out of bed before the chime can sound – and attempt to sleep through the sunrise. Nooroo had warned him upon Shadow Moth's creation, two miraculous at once is not dangerous, but they will leave him feeling wearier than usual. This instance is the first time he has felt the burden of that power so heavy, heavy enough to make his movements considerably slower, heavy enough to press his usual forward-facing gaze to the stone floor, so that as he opens the atelier door, shuts off the cove lighting, and takes several paces through the atrium on his way to the staircase, he is not aware of the figure sitting on the steps with her knees pulled up to her chest, fingers wrapped around her shins and clutching a pair of tissues.

She alerts him by clearing her throat, and Gabriel jumps, pausing right as he is about to lift his shoe to the first step, hand falling over the banister. His gaze flicks up, and sitting midway up the stairwell, half-lidded eyes dark as a midnight blue sky, is Nathalie. Her expression doesn't change as he sees her. Her features hang low and she looks about as tired as he feels right now.

"I didn't notice you," Gabriel says. He senses that Nooroo has hidden himself somewhere on his person. He always tended to move out of sight regardless of Nathalie being perfectly capable of ignoring him anyway. "You startled me."

"Forgive me. I should have said something," she replies. It sounds as though the previous attempt to clear her throat a few seconds ago had not actually helped her. Her voice is hoarse, and she brings the tissues up to her mouth to cough twice very roughly.

"No, it's alright." He almost moves to ascend the stairs towards her, but stays put to ask, "What are you doing here?"

She blinks at him and takes a moment to answer, as the answer should be and is quite obvious. "Waiting for you."

Gabriel's fingers tighten around the banister. "And how long have you been waiting?"

"Only since I received the notification that the attack was over." Nathalie folds the tissues one by one, before placing them neatly in the pocket of the robe she is wearing. It's wine-red and made of silk and has the _Gabriel_ insignia stitched across the right breast in black thread that is difficult to see in the dim atrium. "So not long. More, I'm just surprised the fight lasted so long. Are you getting the hang of using two miraculous?"

Gabriel swallows. This is the first time Nathalie has brought up the new arrangement since he had first explained it to her so concisely. Shadow Moth's first failure had elicited no reaction he could pick up on at all, following their conversation; his second had earned a very long stare when he had emerged back into the atelier. It was a day she had been feeling well enough to work as effectively as if she was not still sick, and Gabriel supposed she did not understand why he hadn't chosen to employ her help. He second guessed it himself, until Nathalie collapsed that very same night, indicating that any apparent strides in her recovery were not to be trusted yet.

One hand falling over the pocket containing the peacock brooch, Gabriel admits, "Perhaps, though I feel especially tired tonight."

"I do not blame you. It's midnight." Her feet, stuck in a pair of ivory slippers, shift against the marble step. "Did you come close?"

"No closer than ever before."

"I've seen nothing of interest being reported."

"Nothing of interest happened. It was only a long night."

"Then I won't keep you any longer. You should rest." Though her words suggest an end to the brief exchange, she does not move from her place, keeping her eyes locked on him at the bottom of the staircase.

Gabriel raises an eyebrow. He takes several soft steps up to her level, hand sliding along the railing until he lets go to take a seat right at her side. Nathalie glances away, facing ahead towards the front door. Up close, he notices the mascara smudged under her eye.

"You will need rest too," he murmurs. "Are you coming?"

 _Are you coming?_ he asks, as if he has any intention of moving now. The two of them feel fixed on the steps, muscles loose rather than bracing to rise, breath easing in and out of their lungs steadily, there being no sharp inhale to precede a sudden movement.

She says, "I have rested enough for one lifetime."

"If that is true, then you should rest for two," Gabriel remarks. He scans her face carefully. It remains relatively unchanged, but he wonders if he may have just seen her nose twitch into a split-second grimace. There is a pang somewhere around his heart, and he can't quite tell whether it is the miraculous or his own response to the discomforted, tired visage she wears. He is not surprised that she has been so melancholy lately. He had fixed the peacock miraculous nearly three weeks ago, but Nathalie was far from feeling like her old self. For all the grimoire's extensive instructions on how to repair a broken miraculous, it contains almost no information at all on how to help a person who has been hurt by one.

He reaches out a hand, and the smooth silk fabric of her robe invites him to gently rub a series of small circles into her shoulder. She looks back at him, at his hand, then at his face, which watches her closely observing the rise and fall of her narrow brow.

"Why are you really here?" he asks, voice low.

The house is quiet this time of night. Darkness presses in around them. It's cool and empty and the stone where they sit is so solid that it feels like it's been there forever, like it will be there forever, and forever is how long it seems to take before Nathalie responds, her voice a rasp that shivers through the atrium and warps the silence which seems so ancient.

She whispers, watching him, "I could ask you the same thing, Sir." Eyes, dark and glassy, slowly blind as she starts to shake her head. "Why are you here?"

"Nathalie," he starts, the circular motion of his hand pausing to grip her shoulder a little more firmly. He does not say anything more as she goes on.

"I am not eager to question you. I want to trust your instinct, sir. But I do not understand." She takes his hand away and holds it between the both of hers, squeezing as she speaks. Her skin is ice cold, and a chill shoots into Gabriel's scalp. "I do not understand this Shadow Moth at all."

Gabriel waits to become more accustomed to the frigid feel of her hands before he speaks. He leans so close that his words are little more than a breathy whisper she can hear perfectly well. "I told you, Nathalie. It's not permanent. It is the best I can do while you recover from your illness."

He wonders if she has always been so pale, or if it has only been a long time since the color has tinged her cheeks, a long time since she has been well enough to appear healthy and normal to an onlooker. Gabriel has once overheard a stranger approach her in public, while she clasped him before her in the form of a digital screen to observe from the privacy of his atelier, and ask, "Mademoiselle, are you alright?" For a stranger to be so bold, to offer her a seat and a beverage she would pridefully refuse in an effort to fade into the background once more, it must have been painfully evident that she wasn't well enough to be on her feet.

Nathalie has always understated how sick she feels and that has not changed since she acquired the solution to half the problem. It is not a shock that she would prefer to use the peacock miraculous herself as long as it is fixed.

She stares at him doubtfully, biting the inside of her cheek. "I don't think that's true. It might be true if we had no other resources, but – Sir, we have the entire grimoire at our disposal, and all of this information about power-ups, hidden abilities. Shadow Moth is, by comparison, so much more impractical."

"Do you believe that?"

"You have no more power than you did with Mayura," she tells him, "And one less person. The closest we've ever got to winning is when we have both been able to act."

"Well, we would not both be acting even if I use a power-up," he says.

She inhales as if to speak, but hesitates, lashes fluttering as she rapidly blinks.

"Nathalie."

"No, we wouldn't, but at least there would be some kind of change being made," she eventually explains. "Sir, don't you think we need to be making stronger choices if we have any shot at winning? I understand Shadow Moth is temporary, but," she releases his hand and uses the tip of her index finger to flick a strand of his silver hair back into place, "you're only wearing yourself out. I am not convinced you are even confident that you'll succeed this way."

"I'm not." He admits it very easily, and her expression changes, eyes widening. Gabriel smooths out the hair she'd brushed at and sighs heavily. "I know perfectly well Shadow Moth will accomplish nothing."

"Then, why?" she wonders.

"I don't know. I could send out akumas as Hawkmoth alone and yield the same results. I could enhance my own powers by creating potions and manage to come closer to victory, but I do not believe even that would make much of a difference."

She finds his words alarming, judging by the sudden pivot of her body, so that it goes from facing out to the wide open atrium to facing him. Her hair, tied in a ponytail reaching her upper back, swings from one shoulder to the other. "Sir, remember, we have come very close before –"

"I know, Nathalie."

"I'm sorry," she says, quieter this time. "You sounded pessimistic. I don't want you to feel hopeless, not when we have made so much progress."

"It doesn't seem like so much." He presses his eyes shut, a deep breath flowing in and out of his lungs. The weight by his heart has returned. He can feel it, the way it tries to pull him further into himself. His throat is dry, sandpapery.

Nathalie fingertips settle on his chest, right above the place the burden sits, as if she knows it is there. Then her palm falls, gently. Her eyes glimmer with a subtle sympathy past their hardened, crystalline surfaces. "I know. Nothing will feel like enough until you have her at your side again."

It takes a moment for Gabriel to process her warmly-spoken words. He is focusing on the weight of her hand; though it sits on the outside, it manages to draw him out of the space into which the pang in his heart insists on dragging him. He resurfaces and shrugs, cold all over. She removes her touch, something he momentarily regrets before he is responding, words coming in swift succession. "Yes, it – it feels like – she is out of reach no matter how much – I'd meant…" There is a very strange sensation in his core, something that isn't quite shame, nor is it embarrassment, but something rounder and smaller, and right now he wishes he had explained himself sooner. "Yes, Nathalie, it's hard not to feel discouraged after so many months, but I'd meant – the progress, it doesn't seem like so much when I am _alone_."

She isn't sure how to reply. Her expression is that of mild concern and her fingers dangle in the air.

"I knew Shadow Moth wasn't a worthwhile experiment after I lost the first time. I didn't want you to feel like you had to hurry to get better," he explains. "And the reason I chose not to try something else is because I didn't want to do it without – without you there to support me, as you always do, as you are always eager to do."

"Oh—" Nathalie's bloodless skin gains some of its color back as her cheeks gradually flush pink. She turns away, opening several centimeters of space between them, where previously they were sitting knee to knee.

Gabriel does not understand the reaction. His own stomach is in a knot as he goes on, "But I realized tonight that wearing the peacock miraculous is not an adequate substitution for your presence – that is to say, the reason I've used it twice more was to—" She has moved her hand from its place in midair to her ribs as she hugs herself, so Gabriel cannot take it. Instead, he leans closer, hoping she has not chosen to tune him out "–remind me of how much stronger Mayura makes Hawkmoth."

She stares at him like he has grown a second head, though he cannot comprehend what about his words is so startling. "Remind you?" she says. "You bother with a whole new villain identity – that you admit you know won't serve you – for a reminder?"

Certain his countenance is pink as her own, assuming the heat in his cheeks is anything to go by, Gabriel glances away. "As I said, it doesn't sufficiently replace the comfort your companionship has always provided. It's not the power that helps, but you." He swears he has said something to this effect before. It might be the late night hour that makes the words feel like gravel pouring out of his mouth, or the fact he is convinced of how terrified Nathalie has been this whole time that Shadow Moth served as solid, tangible proof despite all past reassurances that the peacock's power – any power really – was more crucial than herself.

"I'm sorry," he hears himself say when she fails to reply. Gabriel plucks the glasses from his nose, sets them aside on the step, and presses his hands to his face. The exhaustion that had been lifted from his body during the last couple minutes of the exchange sets back in. Like a swing, like it had been suspended at the slightest angle and released, to be pulled by gravity slowly back into place. He sighs between his hands and presses his palms together in front of his mouth and looks over the black and white blur of the atrium. "I don't know what I've been thinking lately."

"What do you mean?" she asks, a tremble to her voice.

"I don't know." He wonders if he should depart, rise from his seat with a politely murmured "Good night" and go to sleep as he had intended when he first left the atelier. But he doesn't have much energy to move right now, and at the back of his mind he reluctantly considers that there might be more comfortable places to be right now than his bed. In the absence of motion, he goes on to say, "I think I'm trying to make sense of all of this."

"By 'this', you mean…?"

His answer is the placement of his hand over his heart, more specifically, over the weight it carries, that hollow yet burdensome space.

Nathalie's eyes are on him now. He can feel them. He can imagine them burning through the dark like flames of color richer than he had ever seen before. And he can imagine her fingers uncurling from around her ribs and extending in his direction, imagine them falling around his upper arm. Imagine her leaning close to tell him it will be okay like she always does, in however many different ways she knows how to say it.

But she doesn't move, nor speak. She only watches. At long last, when he's able to turn his head to face her, there is something somber and passive about her expression, and it reminds him somehow of the moon, blanketed by clouds one has failed to notice are even there, until they entangle her light in feathery blackness.

He tells her, quietly, voice hardly above whisper, "I know I wish you were there with me. Your recovery is more important, and I want you to take as much time as necessary, as truly necessary. But if I could never leave your side, I don't think I would."

"Then why do you?" she blurts out. But as soon as the question is forth, she appears to regret it.

Gabriel reels for a moment, in astonishment at both his own confession and her sharp response. He hadn't expected those to be the words that would tumble from between his lips next (he hadn't expected any aspect of this exchange at all. If everything had gone to plan, he would've been fast asleep minutes ago), and he certainly did not think Nathalie would react that way. But once he recovers, and he takes in the full image of her unease, he doesn't address it. He knows what she means, that past the first several days following the defeat of Miracle Queen and the worst of her illness, he'd begun to avoid her. There was something, a deep and poignant little stirring somewhere in his soul or adjacent to it, that he could sense when he came near, when he took in the view of her confined to a bed, or forcing work, or offering some comment on the grimoire she spent considerable time reading, a feeling that frightened him to feel though he could not identify what it was he found so alarming, which might have sprung to life after the urgency of her circumstances reduced and he could think further than the amount of time they had left before it was truly too late. Yes, there was something like that. And it had him keep his distance. Now he feels it swirling within him upon the utterance of that anguished question of hers, and he realizes that it might in fact be the answer. As if it is in a language he doesn't know, he is unable to translate it, though there is no use, as he has already decided he would spare her the discomfort of indicating he had even heard her.

What he knows is Nathalie cares he has been aloof.

"Truthfully," he murmurs, taking a breath, "there be one thing I can say I am certain of, it is that I don't know how or if I could have gotten anywhere without you. If Shadow Moth had served any purpose, it was to ensure I would never forget that."

He reaches out, hoping she will take his hand. Nathalie's jaw is tense and her gaze cautiously drops down to his waiting fingers. In the moment of hesitation that passes, a shiver runs visibly through her. She pulls the shiny burgundy fabric tighter around her body and folds in on herself.

"Are you cold?" Gabriel asks. He goes ahead and takes her shoulders.

"Just all of the sudden."

She blinks as the back of his hand presses gently against her cheek. Gabriel remarks, "You feel a little feverish."

"That's not unusual."

"I would like it to become unusual." He guides her to stand, and slowly they rise together. On her feet, she appears even weaker, rocking from slipper to slipper before she turns around to face the upper floor.

"Enough of this," she says. Gabriel worries he has been too forward, but he's relieved to find a tired but warm smile on her face. She stoops, carefully, and picks up his glasses still lying on the step. Gabriel is frozen as stone as she slips them back onto his face, trying not to notice when her fingers skim through the buzzed short hair on the side of his head. "Your…reassurances have done well enough to help my irrational doubts—"

"In no way irrational, I promise you."

"Irrational in a personal context," she says with a slight frown, before she glances away shyly and continues, "But to be transformed for hours with two miraculous must have left you more exhausted than me. And we must use our energy wisely from here forward. I hope you'll care for yourself the way you insist on caring for me, Gabriel." She sets her hands on the steep curves between his neck and his shoulders. She is very close to him when she whispers, "Promise me you will?"

His mind is suddenly a scattered mess trying to figure out who it is he is making the promise for. Somewhere in her words she suggested it is for the sake of their long term goal, and he should know that it would be in her nature not to place herself at the center of any agenda. Yet, as she stares at him sheepishly, eyes peering so closely into his while she waits for his response, he cannot think to make any promise at all without her at the forefront of his mind, in such clarity as though she was not standing among the darkness of midnight, but in broadly gleaming sun.

He does something daring (except, can it truly be daring if he did not intend to do it?) and leans his face down, down until his forehead rests against hers, and now she is the one made of stone. All at once, he understands how regrettable it is that he had avoided her for so many days. There is a lightness in his chest, and it is easier to breathe. He closes his eyes and tells her, "Thank you, Nathalie."

It isn't the promise, because he's not sure he can keep it. The last thing he wants is a debt of promises that are either impossible to or that he is incapable of satisfying (he cannot tell the difference yet).

But he'll try. She asked him to. It means a lot to him, and he's not sure why.

Nathalie's shocked paralysis gives, and she relaxes. Her hands move upwards to cup his jaw while she sighs tiredly. Tall as she is, just a few inches shy of his own height, as his hands find their way around her waist, he can't help but find her small and delicate, and how deceiving that is because she has to be one of the strongest people he has ever known. Stronger than him, that was certain.

It's not clear who pulls away first, but it doesn't matter, because they make the rest of the way up the stairs together. Gabriel walks her to the room she has occupied since the battle with Miracle Queen. The lamp is on and there is a wastebin of crumpled tissues by the bedside. His heart aches for a moment knowing how much healing she has left to go before she is finally well, but with time, he knows, she will be better off, and she will be there, always.

The last look she gives him before closing the door remains in his mind as he travels to the far end of the hallway to his own room: a mild smile and expressive eyes, vivid with an emotion he won't let himself name, though he has the power to.

Gabriel undresses and goes to bed and sleeps deeply, dreaming of things he won't remember in the morning.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading. Leave a comment, if you'd like :)
> 
> Before you go, the Gabenath Reverse Bang has opened sign-ups to anyone who would like to be a Beta Reader or a Pinch Hitter until September 15th! Check it out! 
> 
> https://gabenathreversebang.tumblr.com/post/628543279387000832/did-you-miss-the-sign-ups-for-the-gabenath-reverse


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